Treat wasting like sepsis: a trigger, a bundle, an audit
Hospitals have fast, standard responses to sepsis and heart attacks. Cancer wasting has no such pathway, so it is noticed late and treated inconsistently.
Cachexia care is fragmented across oncology, dietetics, physiotherapy and palliative care, with no trigger threshold and no bundle. A defined pathway — automatic trigger on weight loss or low muscle mass, same-week multidisciplinary assessment, a standard bundle of nutrition, resistance exercise, symptom control and medication review, and audited outcomes — is a service intervention that requires no new drug.
- Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient · Patients often die of wasting or cannot tolerate the doses that would work. Treating the patient, not just the tumour, lags far behind.
- Fragmented care and guideline gaps · Patients fall between specialists, wait for referrals and often do not get the treatment guidelines say they should.
- Pain relief and palliative care are unavailable to most · Most people who die of cancer worldwide do so without adequate pain relief.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaCatch wasting early with a smart scale and a step counter
Shares Geriatric assessment, Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Exercise & lifestyle oncology.
- InstitutionEuropean Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism
Shares Geriatric assessment, Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Exercise & lifestyle oncology.
- InstitutionShaare Zedek Medical Center
Shares Nathan Cherny, Pain relief and palliative care are unavailable to most, Geriatric assessment.
- IdeaFour weeks of training and nutrition before major cancer surgery, as standard
Shares Geriatric assessment, Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Exercise & lifestyle oncology, Fragmented care and guideline gaps.
- IdeaQualify a physical function endpoint so anti-wasting drugs can be approved
Shares Geriatric assessment, Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Exercise & lifestyle oncology.
- IdeaAggregated single-patient crossover trials for symptom and supportive treatments
Shares Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Exercise & lifestyle oncology.
- TermMalnutrition screening tools (MUST, NRS-2002, MST, PG-SGA)
Shares A dietitian in every gastrointestinal and head and neck tumour board, Geriatric assessment, Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Fragmented care and guideline gaps.
- IdeaRead muscle loss automatically from scans patients already have
Shares Geriatric assessment, Cachexia, toxicity and the limits of the patient, Exercise & lifestyle oncology.